Page 65 of Derecho

I hadn’t noticed her moving toward me, but felt the second her hand landed on my arm. “No. Please. I need you. Your hands are clean. You’re keeping me and the little alien safe. Your compulsions don’t need you right now. But I really, really, really do.”

I nodded, shutting off the water and drying my hands on the fresh towel at the top of the stack I’d brought into the bathroom earlier.

“Are you okay?” she asked, shocking the hell out of me.

“I think I should be asking you that.”

“I wasn’t thinking before. This has to be…hard…for you. I’ll…I’m okay. I don’t need to shout like that. I can be calm. If you need me to.”

“No. Screw that,” I replied.

“What?”

“Don’t shrink yourself for me. Live up to the nickname I gave you. Raise some hell. Yell, scream, cry. Scratch my skin. Break my fingers. Whatever you need to do to get that baby here, we’ll do it. And you won’t, for a single second, worry about me. Got it?”

“I can’t do that. I care about you. I don’t want this to set you back…”

I helped her sit back down before getting down on the floor next to her, our backs both against the bathtub. I brought my hand up, gently cupping the side of her face farthest away from me, before encouraging her to turn. As soon as her eyes met mine, I nodded. “Sloane isn’t going to believe me when I tell her what I’ve been up to since our last session. And I kind of can’t wait to tell her. So, why don’t we really give her something to be impressed with? Yeah?”

“Okay.”

Lainey

“Ohh…” The pain was rolling through me in waves, and it’d be so easy to get pulled under. To lose sense of the storm outside—or of the way I was about to give birth in a bathroom with no one but the man who has become my life line in the last few short weeks.

“Hey. Whatever you’re thinking about right now, clear it from your mind. You’re doing great. We’re going to be just fine.”

“I’m a bad person, Lach. I’m going to be such a bad mom.” I bit down on the inside of my cheek to stop the tears from spilling over my lashes. I was hunched over the edge of the tub, my fingers gripping the ledge as I tried to ride through the latest round of contractions.

“That’s not true.”

“It is,” I whispered. “I don’t…I didn’t want to be a mom. Ever. Never once did I think I was cut out for this. I wanted a life of two-steppin’ down at The Broken Spoke and building my business. I wanted my life to be my own. I was so happy Greg was paying attention to me, and I didn’t say no hard enough. And this…” My hand frantically rubbed over my belly as the pain started again in my back. “God, of course I’m left to deal with this.”

“But you feel different now. About the baby. You were so excited looking at everything today for him.”

“I’m scared. I don’t feel…” My eyes slammed shut as the pain rolled around to my belly. God, these contractions were awful.

“Work with your body. I know how scrappy you are, but don’t fight against the pain.”

“S-somebody should h-have had a crisis around…you…ow….before now.” The words fell out choppy and distorted, but my belly was tightening so fast I thought it might rip in two.

“Why’s that?”

I shook my head at his question. There was no way I was going to be able to answer him. The last bit of my breath left my body as my legs shook, my fingers aching with the force of my grip on the edge of the tub.

I was going to be sick.

This was too much. I wasn’t strong enough.

“You are strong enough.” Lachlan’s hand pressed against my hips, the pressure finally relieving the pain in my back.

“Oh, God. Please don’t stop doing that.”

His chuckle filled the small space. “You got it. Sorry I didn’t think about it before. The book said counter pressure like this in labor can help moms who feel their contractions in their backs.”

I nodded, until what he’d just said actually registered in my mind.

“What book?” I asked as the last little hooks of the contraction released.